


Hands that Held the Sun

by PermianExtinction



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Exploration of Various Backstory Theories, Force Curses, Force-Sensitive Hux, If we ever get there that is, Injured Hux, M/M, Mystery/Horror Elements, Or Is he?, Post-Canon, Significant Scars
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-06-07
Updated: 2016-06-28
Packaged: 2018-07-12 19:32:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 10,062
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7119520
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PermianExtinction/pseuds/PermianExtinction
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For the longest time, Kylo Ren believed the general he shared a command with to be completely beneath his notice. But not long after the destruction of Starkiller Base, Hux is targeted by first by a mysterious Force-wielding assassin, and then a sinister masked spirit, and Ren comes to realize that there is a complex legacy behind the First Order's presence in the Unknown Regions - a legacy that has finally caught up to Hux himself.</p><p>PROBABLY ABANDONED. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with it. Not deleting yet, but maybe soon.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

One of the main reasons why Kylo Ren hated being back on the _Finalizer_ was… surprisingly not the presence of the insufferable General Hux himself. The man was beneath Kylo in every regard, and to consider him even worthy of aggravation was to elevate him above his rightful station. What Kylo hated was having to interact with the crew. _Hux’s_ crew. Because for some unfathomable reason, they all seemed to hold their commanding officer in high regard. A mixture of fear and devotion laced their words as they told Lord Ren that “the General will not be pleased” when the Knight broke one of their rules. Or their command consoles. As if that was supposed to put Ren in his place, as if the invocation of the general was a sharp tug on some invisible leash? Disgust at those implications that he was somehow subordinate to Hux usually escalated Kylo’s destructive moods, until they really did come to the attention of the lauded general himself, who was less a man of words when it came to Lord Ren and more a man of sneers. His pale eyes would lock onto Kylo and his upper lip would curl, as if daring him to betray the Supreme Leader’s specific orders to treat Hux as an equal, not an expendable officer to be intimidated with violence. And of course, Ren never _could_ disobey a direct edict from Snoke.

The reason that these silent contests of power, and all other aspects of sharing a ship with Hux, were so infuriating – except they _weren’t_ , because it was of no concern of Kylo Ren’s, and he didn’t waste energy hating a man who meant _nothing_ to him – was the fact that he could never have challenged Kylo in such a way if he didn’t have the favor of the Supreme Leader. Kylo Ren had no patience for those who had failed to prove themselves as warriors, and who cowered behind the cloaks of greater and more intimidating men. As far as he knew, this was what Hux had done since birth. There was no way a jumped-up weakling like him had gotten to the top without riding on his father’s coattails – and great coattails they were; Commandant Brendol Hux had been a charismatic man who’d had more interest in gathering elite and loyal cadets around himself than teaching them to serve the cause. Well, he’d gotten his chance to shine when the Empire fell, and the centers of power had been scattered or destroyed. Depending on whom you asked, Hux Sr. had been the glue that held the early First Order together.

Kylo didn’t see any signs of that potential in the man’s son. The younger Hux was impassioned, yes, but he was all edges. Bitterness encircled him like a charged field of electricity; Kylo didn’t have to invade the man’s thoughts to sense it. He did not possess what Kylo respected most – the calm chill of a fighter who had at some point clawed victory from an enemy’s clutches. If Hux had ever fought personally on the field of battle, Kylo was sure he must not have won, because there was furious insecurity in everything the general did.

Those had been Kylo Ren’s initial impressions of the man, and he had not seen reason to revise them in all the time they had shared command, even after the success of Starkiller Base – and the failure immediately following it. Kylo refused to give Hux any more attention than he deserved – which was very little indeed. And he assumed that the soldiers and officers who served under Hux were just too blindly sycophantic to see the truth. He also had the suspicion that they preferred the authority of the stable and predictable Hux to the often violent Kylo Ren, which was an observation Kylo had made without emotion attached to it. Certainly not jealousy; he did not particularly need or want the devotion of any of the First Order besides his own Knights of Ren.

But there were times when the _Finalizer_ crew’s avoidance of him was frustrating purely due to the situation at hand.

A garbled message was coming through the comm systems. Up until this moment, the day had been quite uneventful, and Kylo’s attendance on the bridge had been for appearances alone. He sensed the fear from the officer who first heard the message even before it was relayed, and he swept forwards like a stalking predator. “What seems to be the problem?” he started to ask, with his usual growl of menace, but the officer was already looking past him.

“General Hux, sir! We're receiving word of a security breach in Sector Eight! The door locks leading to auxiliary engineering have been deactivated—“

Kylo's gaze snapped back to the general who, to his credit, gave out orders immediately, without the hesitation born from fear. “Give me the reports as they come in. If the threat isn't confirmed neutralized in half a minute, send in all troops within a two-sector radius.”

There was a presence on the ship; Kylo felt it as soon as he knew to look for it. Its intent was obscured, but there was considerable menace in its Force signature. Something stronger than normal.

“Trooper squads TR and TN are reporting in, sir! They say the engine bay has been… Repeat that, Corporal… It's been fully flooded with a neurotoxic gas.” The officer was frantically trying to clear up the message, which was coming through broken and full of static. “And that’s not counting the squads down in the surrounding halls. Whatever’s gotten in is on a warpath.”

 _I’m about to go on a warpath too_ , Kylo thought, saying out loud, “Someone came prepared,” as his hand moved to his belt, touching his saber briefly, perhaps even impatiently. “Seal off the engine bay and tighten security in the sectors immediately adjacent to it. Bring down the emergency blast doors—”

“Belay that!” Hux barked, at Kylo’s side, and the Knight actually found himself clenching his lightsaber for just a brief moment, a tantalizing moment, as a wave of fury swept over him— But Hux was continuing, speaking loudly so that everyone could hear, because he couldn’t pass up a chance to humiliate Kylo Ren, could he? “If the gas has had time to diffuse throughout the engine bay, then the intruder has had time to escape the area. Bringing the blast doors down only limits our own troops’ movements. You don’t catch a beast by dropping nets over its footprints.”

There was one thing Kylo hated more than having to follow stupid orders from Hux, which was having to follow smart ones. And adding that quaint little analogy at the end, as if Kylo was too foolish to understand Hux’s line of thinking without a clarifying comparison, was an extra blow to his pride. And what would Hux know of hunting, anyway? How pretentious.

“In that case, I will take care of the intruder myself, General,” Kylo responded coldly. “Your troopers can hardly be expected to get the job done quicker.” He would show the man how a real hunt went down – with animal instinct coursing through your veins as you relentlessly pursued your prey by their fleeting scent.

He thought he caught sight of Hux opening his mouth to argue, but by then Kylo had already swept from the room.

The Force signature was chaotic and very unfamiliar, but its raw power thrilled Kylo. He suspected the user was non-human, because their connection to the Force had strange undertones and highlights, as if they were relying on it to augment extra senses a human did not possess. Whatever was out there sensed him too; he could detect its eagerness to fight, and matched that eagerness with a wordless, soundless roar, challenging the intruder to a duel.

That tactical theorist, Hux, could never understand what it meant for two powerful individuals to meet on the field of battle. What passed between opponents was something hallowed and transcendent. It was an embodiment of the eternal struggle life puts out against extinction. This was why military protocol infuriated Kylo Ren; more often than not, he was encouraged to take his most challenging opponents prisoner. This defied the meaning of the struggle in the first place; if winning was not the only way to survive then the purity of the encounter was lost.

The hazy presence was sharpening as Ren reached the TIE fighter storage bay in the sector above Eight. This would make a fine arena, he thought, as he probed the Force signature for more of a discernible identity. Whatever had arrived on this ship was clearly looking for a fight – with him, of course, the leader of the Knights of Ren. _Show yourself and we will settle this,_ he intoned silently.

 _Find me,_ came the response, just as all power shut down, and the hall fell dark. A squadron of stormtroopers was stationed below in the bay itself, and they all raised their blasters, clearly frightened and expecting trouble.

Kylo vaulted over the railing on the upper observation deck and landed with one foot on the tip of a fighter’s wing. The Force buoyed his next leap, which was to the adjacent fighter. There he crouched, inner eyes scanning his surroundings, before dropping down to the dome of the cockpit. In the half-darkness, none of the troopers had spotted him yet. He could move very silently when he wanted to.

 _What are you waiting for?_ his thoughts growled, as he unclipped his saber from his belt. Below him, the squad leader was yapping out orders to his men, directing them to check emergency power.

_I am already here._

He could not put any sort of identity markers to the mental projection he caught. No detectable gender, no apparent emotion, and no signs of an accent or dialect that would place the user’s origins. Their thoughts were not a series of words; instead it was all in concept. Kylo did not hear the sentence “I’m already here”, he simply received the knowledge of this the way one knows which direction gravity points in. And this was not a very reassuring thing.

“Lord Ren, sir! What are our orders?” It was the stormtrooper squad leader. Kylo’s innermost thoughts surged with irritation at the interruption. Apparently the not-voice had rattled Ren enough that he had become more visible to the troopers. Or they had activated their night vision. Kylo made one more jump – this one down to the floor of the bay. He was sure that his superhuman flight through the air intimidated the trooper leader, who took a shuffling step back.

“Your orders are to scour the area for any more planted traps,” Kylo commanded. “We don’t want another bay full of neurotoxin.”

“Sir! We’re on it, sir!”

In reality it was just a pitiful distraction Kylo had invented for them, something to keep them from getting in his way, but he pretended to watch them for a few seconds, as if it mattered to him that they were doing their job right.

 _I am here._ Here in the storage bay? The Force signature that Kylo was reading was still weak, as if distant. It was like following a voice that was being played back on a recording. _I am here_ but was it the same here as Kylo’s current location? That wasn’t necessarily the case, he realized. It was not an “I am with you” message. It was an “I have already arrived at my intended destination”.

“We’ve found something, sir!” shouted one of the stormtroopers. “It’s been stuck to the underside of one of the maintenance lifts!”

“What kind of _something_?” Kylo hissed, marching across the bay to where the soldier was standing and pointing upwards with their rifle. He followed their gaze and spotted the dim outline of a hemispherical object. It was like a wart on the underside of the machine. He raised a hand, palm facing up, and twitched his fingers, gesturing for the object to come. It tore away from the lift floor with a hideous screech and whizzed down to Kylo’s hand.

Anger rose in him as he examined it. The object was not metallic, as he’d initially assumed, but mineral. Some type of black crystal with faint carvings on it. It was vibrating with Force energy, not like a living being would, but – again, like a recording of a living being’s signature. With one furious motion, Kylo dropped the object and then activated his lightsaber, skewering the crystal on the floor with a stab like a sacrifice.

The troopers, sensibly, scuttled back from Kylo Ren, glancing at one another when they thought he couldn’t see. Even without speaking, Kylo was visibly enraged.

Because, with a molten hole now through the center of the domed crystal, the Force signature that Kylo had been sensing vanished from the bay. Not from the ship, though. This object was not the source of the signal. It had only been a mechanism for the user to throw their aura like a ventriloquist. Kylo knew he should have preserved the artifact for further study, but he was too livid for that.

He had been quite handily tricked. Lured away from where the intruder really was headed. Where they already were. In his head, he swore like a space-hardened smuggler.

“L-Lord Ren,” began the trooper leader. “Should we—?”

The lightsaber blade cut out; a wave of Kylo’s hand sent the crystal hurtling through the air to smash against the wall. “The intruder… is in the command bridge,” he said through gritted teeth. “Organize a medical team, now. There are likely already casualties.” Two long strides towards the exit, walking as fast as anyone else might jog – he wasn’t running, not yet. But he considered it. If he didn’t make it back to the bridge in time, he would be disgraced in the eyes of the entire First Order.

As expected, the halls were clogged with stormtroopers who had evacuated the gas-flooded bay below or had been called in for backup from nearby sections. Kylo pinned them against the sides of the halls with a sweeping gesture; marching through the resulting aisle and leaving the troopers behind him to crumple like a breaking wave.

 _I was never the target._ He couldn’t deny this fact, but even so he simply didn’t comprehend it. Why would a rogue Force-user infiltrate the Finalizer to assassinate some insignificant, replaceable general? Perhaps it was an attempt to get revenge for the devastation caused by Starkiller Base. But surely firing of Starkiller – the destruction of five planets – could be blamed on anyone in the higher echelons of the First Order. It was true that there were rumors that many of the design schematics had been drafted by Hux himself, but Kylo Ren didn’t believe the man could have possibly had that much of a hand in the planning stages. Starkiller Base had been conceived of more than a decade ago; Hux would have been barely more than a stripling. Surely, he must have simply taken credit for the work of a faceless mass of engineers.

The main blast doors to the command bridge had been sealed shut, but it was clear there was no safety in this; Kylo could sense the intruder within. As he raced towards the doors, he wrestled against their resistance to the power of the Force; unfortunately the locking mechanism was too intricate. He could try to override the locks with delicacy, but he knew he was too agitated and humiliated to muster the required focus. What he _could_ channel those hideous emotions towards was brute strength; he ignited his saber and drove it into the thick metal, ignoring the way the hilt vibrated dangerously in his hands.

With the seal on the door breaking, sounds from inside bled through – shouts, blaster fire, and an unmistakable, resonant hum that pulsed every few seconds.

The locks snapped; the blast doors burst open. Kylo was already in a low crouch, two-handing his weapon. He saw the uniformed bodies covering the floor; some still twitching, others clearly never moving again. More importantly, he saw, at the center of the room, two figures standing upright, one holding the other in what almost seemed like a mockery of an intimate embrace. The figure behind: hooded with a completely featureless chrome mask domed over its face, the man in front, stiff with shock, with his back arched slightly upwards, his feet beginning to be lifted from the ground. General Hux’s eyes were wide; his jaw and throat were being gripped by a hand clad in sharp, shiny plate armor. The orange of his hair and the scarlet blood splatter on his cheek stood out in contrast to his pale skin – paler even than normal.

And then, before Kylo could react, there was a saber protruding from the lower part of Hux’s abdomen. Its blade was as black as the void of space. Hux let out a choked, horrified gasp and strained harder against his captor, whose claw-like fingers tightened around his neck, drawing pinpricks of blood.

Kylo Ren slowly straightened his spine and slid into a new fighting stance. His mind was curiously blank.

The smooth-masked intruder stepped back, planted a boot on the small of Hux’s back, and shoved him off the blade to crumple in a heap on the floor. Kylo Ren felt a stab of even blanker blankness, like the inverse of an emotion, like the way the enemy’s darksaber gave off an inverse of a glow. There was no conceivable reason for Kylo to feel anything about this. Besides embarrassment, for having fallen for this masked fighter’s tricks.

He would not underestimate the intruder again, Kylo swore to himself, though even making such a promise cost him precious milliseconds; in that time the attacker surged forwards, covering the distance between itself and Kylo with a dash and a leap. Kylo caught the full weight of the downward strike on his blade but stood his ground, feet planted in a wide stance on the durasteel floor. The discordant crash of two saber blades meeting reverberated in the spacious command bridge.

While on the physical defensive, Kylo lashed out with his mind. Gripping onto the intruder’s thoughts was like holding a ball of guts in your hands – no, worse, in your teeth; everything was slippery, tangled, and nauseating. But Kylo hung on, with the determination of a feral beast, as he smashed back the intruder’s next few thrusts. _Who are you? What are you? What is your cause?_

 _Insignificant whelp_.

Kylo gasped as his head filled with cold, the way it might had he tried to swallow shaved ice, and then to counter that he felt a searing pain as the darksaber skated over his thigh on a rebound from a parry. He stumbled, saw the black unglow swing up as if in slow motion to slice at his jaw. It missed him; he dodged to the right, head snapping back, teeth bared in a frozen snarl.

Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted a flicker of movement. No… _Yes?_

General Hux. His pale eyes were fixed on Kylo, his jaw was clenched, and his fingers were clawing at the floor, trying to gain purchase.

Then Kylo had to avert his gaze, because the intruder was lunging at him once more with a fluid, visceral stab. Kylo deflected it and whirled around, forcing the chrome-masked creature to face away from the man lying prone on the floor. _Hux was alive_. And his gaze had been trying to communicate something.

Bracing himself against the mind-numbing chill, Ren redoubled his mental attacks, invoking the Dark Side to burn passion as fuel. The intruder’s movements were lithe and precise, but they possessed a jerkiness that made Kylo wonder if this being was mechanical instead of flesh.

_Silicon. Close._

He was being toyed with. He hated that; hated it with the rage of a volcanic eruption. _I call on pain, I call on fury. Through passion I gain strength; I will find victory._ Feinting a parry, Kylo heaved his lightsaber up, because it felt so damnably heavy all of a sudden, and smashed it against the black blade, forcing the intruder onto the defensive.

 _There is more than one Dark Side, son of Solo_.

Kylo screamed like a berserker as he battered his saber against the flurry of attacks, his voice crackling through the speech modifier. This was not the first time an enemy had invoked his heritage – not even through his mother, who was royalty, who was Force-sensitive, who had given him his Skywalker blood, but through his father. The insignificant smuggler he’d sent flying into the abyss. But it was the first time that they had done so while holding their own against Kylo Ren. All the others used it as a last desperate defense.

His next lunge was blocked and held, as he tested the enemy’s strength, and it tested him back. In terms of brute power, they were equal; the blades shuddered and wavered forward and back, as one fighter gained a scrap of purchase, as the other matched it.

Kylo felt eyes boring into him that didn’t come from behind the smooth chrome mask. He flicked his attention over to the general who was, to his astonishment, still conscious. The man was levering himself up by his elbows. He was pressing the tip of his middle finger against his teeth and then tugging sharply; one glove removed. As he went to pull off the other in the same fashion, his now bare hand curled, with one finger pointing.

The benefit of a mask meant that the intruder did not necessarily catch the glance that Kylo stole at the wall where Hux was pointing. He also didn’t have time to think about the odd discoloration that he saw marking Hux’s bare palm, though he knew he would think upon it quite heavily later. Survival first.

To hide his intentions, Kylo let out a deafening mental roar; trying to fill the intruder’s Force sense with noise. With only a tiny tendril of his attention left, he sussed out the contents of the panel on the wall. It was all he needed; then his guard nearly broke as the effort of blocking out the intruder’s Force sensitivity pulled the strength from his knees.

He moved with his stumble, desperation giving him the strength to redirect the weight of the incoming strike. Kylo let his back hit the wall and rolled along it, still clinging mercilessly to the cold and slippery thoughts of the silicon warrior. Wildly, he slashed with his saber, warding off the incoming attacks but also gouging deep burning gashes in the walls. He managed to slap a thrust from the darksaber away, burying it in the lock of the hidden safe. Then the durasteel panel gave in, slipping from its position and swinging by a single bolt, revealing a hollow in the wall.

 _To me, Ren!_ Those weren’t the intruder’s thoughts.

Kylo gathered the Force around him and flung Hux’s personal blaster from its alcove as he struck out with his saber one more time. The dual movements confused the intruder for a moment; which should it follow, which should it be more concerned by? Didn’t matter, Kylo thought, they were both deadly.

Hux had dragged himself up on one knee; Kylo noticed with a touch of morbidity that he could actually almost see through the cleanly cauterized hole in the man’s torso. Then the general caught his blaster with his bare, strangely marked hands, and slipped a finger around the trigger; his undeniably handsome features stiffened with determination in the scant moments before he fired. Kylo inhaled sharply, his heart missing a beat. To think, if this had never happened, he might never have known what a steely glow seemed to be lit within Hux’s eyes as he prepared himself for a kill.

The general’s aim was true. Two blaster bolts struck the nape of the smooth-masked intruder’s neck before it could even begin to react. Kylo felt the rending in the Force as it died.

Exultant, he drove his saber forwards, just to establish that victory was absolute (and to make his mark on the body, because he couldn’t let Hux have all the glory), but his blade sliced through air, leather robes, and then more air. The silvery mask toppled, hit the floor with a ringing thump; as it rolled away, Kylo saw that it was empty. The entire form of the intruder lost all definition as the body within the black outfit vanished.

There was no time to worry about that, though. Kylo stared across the room to the man whose sharp gaze had now become glassy, whose crisp firing stance was now wavering along with his grip on life. The adrenaline rush, the thrill of the kill, was extinguished along with the fiery blade of Kylo’s saber. He rushed to Hux’s side, catching him by his shoulders as he tipped over.

“ _Where_ are the medics?” Kylo demanded harshly, sensing the crowd of alarmed troopers gathering outside the blast doors. “We need them _now!_ The General is gravely injured!”

Then, Kylo felt a tight grip on his tunic and looked down at the man cradled – because that was the only accurate word for it – in his arms. Hux’s lips parted, a hoarse rattle escaped his throat.

“Wouldn’t… have been… if you’d followed… damn… _orders_ ,” Hux sneered, with his last conscious breath, and then his fingers slipped from Kylo’s robe, his hand dropping limply to the floor.

Kylo wanted to smash every computer console in the room. It _had_ been his failure. He had allowed his pride to distract him from the obvious ruse that the attacker had planned. Petty, petty, foolish, foolish. _Insignificant whelp_. That assassin would have beaten him, if it hadn’t been for the general’s ruthless, death-defying adherence to his duty.

“I’m not supposed to spare the battle-fallen,” Kylo said, though the unconscious man wouldn’t have heard him. “But I expect Leader Snoke would be disappointed if I didn’t assume responsibility for this.” Hux wasn’t breathing; Kylo couldn’t sense a heartbeat. However, the injury had simply sent the man’s body into shock; the most vital organs were still intact. Kylo placed his palm over Hux’s chest and concentrated.

The Force squeezed softly on Hux’s heart, then released. Blood, moving again. Keep it flowing to the brain, keep it circulating. It helped that the wound wasn’t bleeding; the heat of the saber had sealed it shut. Another assisted heartbeat. _Thub-dub._ Come on. Keep it going. _Thub-dub_.

Even though his focus was all on the heart, Kylo let his gaze wander down to Hux’s hand, splayed palm-up on the floor. The skin was a chaotic mesh of tiny wrinkles, raw fleshy pink with the grooves in between almost translucent; a cursory glance told Ren that similar markings deformed the other palm. Burn scars; very old ones by the way they had stretched. He wondered how much sensation the man had in his hands, if he could touch and feel anything at all with them. Kylo thought of the blaster on the floor; like most other higher ranked officers’ weapons, it was coded to respond only to the assigned user’s fingerprints. It was a bit of a cruel joke in this case, Kylo recognized. Hux didn’t _have_ fingerprints, but his distinctive pattern of scars clearly worked just the same. He’d always thought that Hux kept his gloves on to show that he didn’t need to be ready to fight, that his blaster was a ceremonial prop at best. Perhaps that was still the case, but the man had just now demonstrated proficiency in the use of his weapon, and he clearly had another reason not to remove his gloves.

The medics swarmed in, at last. Kylo kept his hand on Hux’s chest, working his heart for him, even as he was lifted onto a stretcher.

“Gather up the mask, and the saber,” Kylo ordered, pointing at what remained of the assassin. “And the Force device, from the hangar bay. Designate them with the _highest_ level of security clearance and deliver them to my quarters.”

It wasn’t necessarily unusual for someone to have scars; accidents happened. But the cosmetic surgery to remove the marks would be readily available to someone of Hux’s rank and background. Some First Order officers wore scars proudly, to intimidate and impress. But Hux kept these concealed; their existence a reminder only to himself. Why? That was something _Kylo Ren_ would do. Not a man who arrogantly waged war with theories. And besides, a burn on one’s palms was more likely to come from spilling boiling liquid on oneself or touching a superheated piece of metal than some meaningful battle.

Though what had transpired here, he thought, as he kept general’s heartbeat at a steady rhythm, hadn’t been theoretical at all.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kylo Ren obsesses over the identity of the intruder, while the Finalizer finds itself under temporary new management.

All in all there had been thirty casualties; twenty-one out of commission and nine dead. The nine had been mostly bridge officers; survivors attested that they had thrown themselves at the assassin in an attempt to protect General Hux. Normally Kylo Ren would have scoffed at such behavior but in this case it had done its job.

The job that should have been Kylo’s to do, he forced himself to admit; had he remained on the bridge, the situation would have been very different. He tried to convince himself that the intruder would have continued to wreak havoc on the ship until Kylo had left his post to confront them; in the end there could have been far worse damage.

As long as Hux recovered. Kylo had remained with him until all the machines had been hooked up and Kylo was no longer needed to keep the man’s heart going. He knew he was too inexperienced to fix any of the damage himself; the wound needed to be reopened, regenerative matrices needed to be applied. Most of that would be done by surgeons; Kylo checked and double checked their clearances until there could be no doubt of their loyalty – and then he’d Forced his way into their minds anyway, searching for the barest hint that they might not do their job properly. Hopefully these interrogations hadn’t left them unable to work at maximum efficiency. Right now, however, Kylo was more concerned that the infiltration of the ship had been part of a larger conspiracy.

Eventually, though, he excused himself from medbay, because he was struck with a strangely lingering sense of discomfort when he examined Hux’s limp, lax features. He’d never considered how much of the man’s appearance was a façade; the patient lying on the operating table was young, full-lipped, skinny-limbed, with soft eyelashes and pale skin that flushed and bruised easily. All of that technically described Hux, but no one would be caught dead admitting it, least of all Kylo Ren. Without his mouth twisting with displeasure, and his eyes coldly flashing, Hux was too pitiful to behold.

Kylo retired to his room as soon as he was able and laid out the relics that the intruder had brought. The mask. The Force-diverting device (with its new hole through the center). The robes (still smelling charred). The saber.

A user of the Dark Side who had escaped the notice of the Knights of Ren and of Leader Snoke. Chilling, to say the least. If it had been a Jedi, Kylo might have been able to blame Skywalker and the Resistance, but there was no precedent for this.

Before he consulted the Supreme Leader, however, he could expend some effort trying to tease secrets from the artifacts. The reek of the Force was strong on them; Kylo decided this made them likely ceremonial or culturally distinctive in nature. Traces of their essence would only remain on their clothing if that clothing had meaning beyond their owner’s power. Additionally, when the assassin had been killed, their body had become one with the Force nearly instantly; this was more common with Jedi who had mastered their monkish detachment from the world, but it was not impossible for a practitioner of the Dark Side to be so pure in their passion as to leave no body behind upon their death. Everything was pointing to the assassin being a member of a specific cult, not simply a transcendentalist or non-denominational Force-user. This had been a zealot of some kind.

He inspected the darksaber first. As a weapon, it held the strongest memory. When he curled his fingers around the grip, a rush of jumbled echoes sent a shiver down his spine. He inhaled slowly and then ignited it; the memories sharpened like a decoded transmission.

First, he smelled rain, not soft nor gentle but rain as a torrent, as a constant battering of the ground, raindrops that tore leaves from the trees, forming rushing rivulets that stirred silt up and drowned all the worms in the soil. Through this, he could also pick out the acrid tang of ozone. Lightning. He didn’t hear thunder.

Delicately, Kylo traced up the length of the blade, cupping his palm slightly above the deadly beam. Another memory flashed: the polished skull of a craggy-horned, long-jawed beast, bone white staring out of pure blackness. Pinpricks of yellow light winked on behind the chipped eyesockets and for a moment, Kylo could see the outline of a humanoid figure in a black, fluttering cloak; the skull, pale, seeming to float at head height in the shadows, was its mask. Who had the figure been to the assassin? Friend and foe were equally likely. And the vision of its gaze felt disturbingly… alive.

 _I see you, Knight_.

Kylo’s fingers twitched, deactivating the saber. He hastily set the hilt aside and ran his tongue over the inside of his suddenly very dry mouth. It was just a memory, he told himself. Just an echo.

After taking a longer moment than he would admit to collect himself, he turned to the rest of the artifacts. Compared to the saber, their Force signatures were duller in focus, though when Kylo laid his hand upon the blank, featureless mask, a steady numbness started to spread up from his fingertips. Cold, numbing, emptiness, like space itself.

Setting aside the mask for now and curling his fingers slowly as they filled with the prickling of returning sensation, Kylo turned to the black hemisphere that had mimicked the intruder’s Force signature. Inspecting it, he found slight ridging that formed symbols and shapes, even disregarding the more easily visible, albeit thin, veins of rust red.

He struggled to inspect these fainter carvings for a few minutes before he realized he was being a bit mulish, and removed his helmet, rubbing his face to wipe away the sweat that had gathered. “Lights at point seventy five,” he instructed the room computer, and winced as for the first time in a while, his quarters brightened to the level of a normal living space.

Once his eyes adjusted, it was easier to distinguish the markings. He resisted the temptation to scan them into the computer; for one thing, information was always less secure when uploaded to a computer. For another… there was an unsettling power emanating from the symbols. When he stared at them closely, inspecting them as fragments of shapes, they were simply that, shapes. But when he looked at them as a whole, and began to consider the full set of images, he felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. Nothing he saw held any significance to him; he was still as ignorant as ever about the artifacts and their owner. But he wondered, a bit awed and a bit unnerved, if the symbols had a life of their own. Scanning them into the computer, allowing them to reconstruct themselves, might lead to strange complications.

Although now Kylo was tempted to do just that, out of curiosity. He put the notion aside for later consideration. He would have to consult with Leader Snoke before trying anything risky.

 _There is more than one Dark Side,_ the assassin had said. Kylo was beginning to see what they had meant. It was unnerving, but also tantalizing.

For the time being, Kylo pressed his hands over the symbols, obscuring most of them from his view, and concentrating on one tiny section of them at a time. He reached for an ink pen and a sheet of flimsi – he was probably the only person on the entire ship who kept parchment in his room, but there were some things too sensitive to record on anything electronic. And it was sometimes soothing to sketch the visions that came to him in bursts and flashes while he meditated. It put them under his control.

Painstakingly, he recreated the more prominent symbols on the black domed object. What word would best describe it? Transmitter? Decoy? If he presented it to Snoke, would the Supreme Leader be vexed that Kylo had destroyed it? Most likely, but there was nothing to be done about it now. He wondered if it only had the one use of misdirecting a person’s Force signature – in which case it must be very old, and must date back to a time when Force users were far more common and had to devise countermeasures – battlefield strategies – against one another. But it might be capable of many, more complex functions. Or, it had been, until it was stabbed. Stabbing tended to limit the functions of most things.

… he _wasn’t_ thinking of Hux.

Folding the piece of flimsi and cramming it behind his belt, Kylo stood. Before he fitted his mask back on, he paid brief respects to the remains of Lord Vader’s own mask. He felt guilty, at being able to take his helmet off with ease if he required it, when Vader had been forced to suffer, trapped in his shell.

 _It’s just another way I will surpass him_ , Kylo reminded himself. _I wear this mask by choice, not out of necessity, hence my conviction will be even stronger._

 

There was no doubt in Kylo’s mind, though: he would have to confer with the Supreme Leader. Even after the arduous process of mastering the Dark Side as Snoke taught it, there was still a great deal Kylo did not know. He was deeply ashamed to be contacting Leader Snoke so soon after leaving the sunless sanctum where he trained, but he could not keep what had happened to himself.

Which led him to slamming his fist against the door to the General’s office. Two specialist troopers were standing guard on either side of the door – or, they _had_ been standing guard until Kylo showed up. Now, they were clutching their riot batons to their chests and trying to edge as far away from the Knight as possible without actually abandoning their post. Riot batons could deflect lightsabers, Kylo remembered. But, wisely, these soldiers didn’t intend to test that.

After a few seconds of heavy knocking, the door lock bleeped and slid open. Kylo swept in.

“Are you here to deliver your report on the attack?” asked the man sitting at Hux’s desk. His voice was low, perfectly enunciated, with a mechanical tinge. His breathing was a bit more audible than normal.

From behind his mask, Kylo squinted disdainfully at the officer, though he was in fact slightly unnerved. “Lieutenant… Mitaka.”

“Acting General Mitaka, for the time being.” If his tone was nervous, it was lost in the touch of distortion.

Kylo tried to remember if he’d seen the officer at any point since returning to the _Finalizer_. Surely, he told himself, he would have noticed someone with two protruding black disks embedded in their throat. A partial voice synthesizer, likely with a separate function assisting breathing.

But the last time Kylo could recall interacting with the man was when he’d been choking half the life out of him in a black rage. He hadn’t realized how hard he must have squeezed.

Normally Kylo would barely recall the names and faces of the people he’d bullied and pushed about, and if he did encounter them again he was content to drink in their fear of him. But for some reason, seeing Mitaka sitting so brazenly in General Hux’s office, with a damnable contraption stuck in his neck to make up for what must have been permanent damage to his trachea and voice box, birthed a bitterness in Kylo. Both towards Mitaka himself and towards whomever thought him a capable replacement for Hux. There were officers of higher rank aboard the ship who surely would have been better candidates.

“Acting General Mitaka,” Kylo said nastily, before he could stop himself. “How does it feel for a bootlicker like yourself to be filling a greater man’s shoes?”

Mitaka swallowed, though the motion clearly brought him discomfort, and leaned away from Kylo. “Since when do _you_ consider General Hux a great man?”

Kylo could detect resentment, even hostility, curdling in the young man’s simple mind. It was infuriating, because those emotions were pushing away his fear, making him bolder. So Mitaka had been _angry_ about being terrorized, and crippled, and had stewed in that anger until he lost his subservience.

He had no _right_ to do that, Kylo thought. No right to feel such transgressive, rebellious emotions. Who did he think he was?

Slamming his palms down on the desk that separated him from Mitaka, Kylo loomed forward and growled, “I’m not here to make a report. I’m here to tell you to take this ship to the base over Harlon III, _Restitution_.”

Mitaka did quail slightly at Kylo’s threatening tone, but he lifted his chin and looked Kylo squarely in the eye. “According to the most recent reports, that base is no longer secure. The Resistance is aware of its location, and they may have allies in the neighboring planets.”

“I require,” Kylo snarled, “conference with Supreme Leader Snoke. _Restitution_ has the nearest holochamber.” He had not expected to be argued with, for a multitude of reasons. Hux always had counterarguments ready for anything Kylo proposed, often to the point of absurdity, and whomever filled in that command position could not possibly be more combative than that. And it was news to him that the planet, which had been sympathetic to the Order for years, was slipping from their grasp.

“You cannot contact him from here?”

 _Don’t. Question. Me_. “Not to the extent necessary. Leader Snoke must be told everything about the Force-user who infiltrated the ship and attacked our General.”

Mitaka stood. He was at eye level with Kylo Ren for only as long as Kylo leaned in over the desk. “If you are so concerned about General Hux’s welfare, you wouldn’t advise taking this ship closer to potentially disputed territory.”

“But I’m not advising. I’m commanding.” He threw out a Force aura of menace, something that would send chills down anyone’s spine.

Mitaka was visibly trembling, but Kylo saw him clench his fingers around the arms of Hux’s chair, and once more Kylo could feel terror shifting to indignation. “The ship is due to take on a fresh complement of stormtroopers in three hours. If we travel to _Restitution_ , it might be best to be at peak defensive capabilities.”

Because it meant playing by Mitaka’s rules, Kylo desperately wanted to say no. He couldn’t argue with the logic of it, and technically he was getting his way. But not on his own terms, which meant his authority was not unquestioned.

“It had better be _exactly_ three hours, _Acting General_ ,” Kylo growled. Hairline cracks spread out from where his hands were pressed to the surface of the desk, and a series of faint snaps and pops accompanied them, like the sound of rapidly melting ice. Mitaka watched the pale fractures form with horrified fascination, and then hastily nodded.

Finally satisfied, Kylo stepped back and stalked from the room.

 

He ended up spending the intervening time in one of his practice halls, testing out the heft of the darksaber. He admired the range and sweep of it; it seemed to put up less resistance when swung compared to his own, likely because the blade was thinner than his. The more he used it, the more it seemed to suck the heat out of the air, and it sliced through training dummies and durasteel faster than any weapon he’d ever used. It was not a saber he would choose for his own fighting style, but he appreciated its elegance.

It wasn’t just boredom that brought him here, warming up for battle. The news that one of the Order’s most strategically placed planets was shifting loyalties was unacceptable. He recalled what he could about Harlon III as he slid from one stance to another. Its economy was dependent on mining the asteroid belt that encircled its sun. The Sonn-Blas Corporation, which manufactured much of the First Order’s fleet, had a strong presence on the planet; by this point its government was a puppet state of the corporation itself.

Perhaps the Resistance was riling up the laborers with propaganda, Kylo thought, as he bent to his knees and lunged forward, holding his wrists steady so the stab went perfectly straight. He’d want to find out who was in charge of integrating First Order interests with the government’s. Scare them into enacting stricter methods to suppress the local population. But there was always a possibility of combat.

The troopers did arrive on time, and the _Finalizer_ sped off through hyperspace towards the Harlon system. Kylo almost wished there had been delays, so he had a reason to hound Mitaka. Frustration burned in his veins without an outlet.

Just before he boarded his command shuttle, which had already been packed with the relics left behind by the intruder, Kylo received word from the sour-faced Colonel Datoo that Hux’s surgery had been successful, and that the General was being moved to a bacta tank.

“And how long will he be recovering?” Kylo demanded.

“The medtechs are unsure. His wound was quite severe.”

Standing halfway up the ramp, finding that the tugging of his intuition – which he had always attributed to the Force – had split and was now pulling in opposite directions, Kylo hesitated. But for all watching, that hesitation could be seen as simply more intimidation. Not everyone on the ship knew yet that Kylo Ren had saved Hux’s life. Kylo himself hadn’t been eager to spread that tidbit of information around. So many of them wondered, plainly, if Kylo was hoping to take Hux out of the picture entirely.

“Relay this… _suggestion_ to the Acting General,” Kylo finally said. “No one outside of the ship is to know of Hux’s condition. And I want any rumors that could be spreading about the ship to be suppressed.”

“Understood, Lord Ren,” the colonel replied, nodding to the pair of troopers that had accompanied him and exiting the hangar. Interesting, Kylo noted, how all highly ranked officers were traveling about with soldiers flanking them now. Paranoia certainly spread quickly.

Kylo stepped into his shuttle and heard the hydraulics hiss as the ramp retracted behind him. The thread of tugging urging him to remain on the ship broke away when the shuttle was sealed, and he put it out of his mind.

             

“An assassin with command of the Dark Side.” The Supreme Leader bent forward on his throne, clearly intrigued. “And the target was…”

“It was General Hux, Supreme Leader,” Kylo finished. He knew his tone betrayed the reluctance he felt in sharing this, as he tipped his head up to meet his master’s gaze. “Though I cannot fathom why…”

It might have been the first time that Kylo had spoken of Hux to Snoke when the general himself was not in the chamber. It had been Kylo’s way of dismissing Hux as unimportant; he would not complain to the Supreme Leader if he and Hux bumped heads over command decisions, because that would allow Hux a status he did not deserve.

And it appeared to Kylo that Snoke was just as bewildered by Hux’s involvement, by how he narrowed his eyes and peered down more keenly. But Kylo had always struggled to read Snoke’s moods, so he could have been angered, suspicious, worried, or even completely unconcerned.

“But the General lives yet,” said Snoke. He hadn’t phrased it as a question. He knew. Kylo was unsurprised; the Supreme Leader knew many things without being told.

“Yes. He survived the attack, but was badly injured.” His thoughts returned again to the incident. Before he could think better of it, he added, perhaps a bit loudly, “I slew the assassin just after it infiltrated the ship’s command bridge.” He reassured himself that this was essentially true; all the real fighting had been on his end of things, hadn’t it?

“Kylo, my trusted apprentice,” Snoke drawled slowly, and Kylo knew he was in for it, wincing even before the creature on the throne had begun to actually _get_ into it. “I detect a note of displeasure in your voice. I assume it is out of concern for your injured _ally_ and not, as some might believe, jealousy.”

“What… what reason would I have to be jealous, master?” Kylo was well aware that he was fumbling his words.

A tight smile jerked at the corner of Snoke’s mouth that wasn’t ravaged by a scar. “You have become intrigued by the origin of this assassin, I can tell. It haunts you to think that you are merely a spectator in the struggle.”

Kylo cast his eyes down to the floor, fell silent, and hated Hux a little more keenly than he had ever done before. “I would think that matters of the Force are to primarily be my domain. Just as matters of military strategy are his.”

“So it has been. And, with the General out of commission for the time being, the investigation of this matter indeed falls to you. But you cannot deny that he has a part to play in this.”

Bitterly accepting Snoke’s wisdom, Kylo produced the artifacts, lifting the chrome mask from where it sat at his hip and brushing aside his cloak to reveal the darksaber, which he had possessively clipped to his belt. “I have studied what the assassin left behind, and in these objects I sensed an allegiance to a cause unfamiliar to me. You have taught me much of the Force, and of the history of the Dark Side, but… I do not recognize the assassin as belonging to any known organization. And the very existence of an organization devoted to the Dark Side that has escaped our knowledge—”

Snoke stilled his words with a gesture. Kylo swallowed nervously as his master prepared to speak.

The Supreme Leader’s voice was silken. “The mask is, to my knowledge, unaffiliated. It bears no distinctive markings, and it appears to be utilitarian at best. And as for the saber…”

Remembering his history lessons, Kylo nodded thoughtfully. “I am aware that a specific black-bladed saber was once a nexus of conflict. It was an ancient Jedi weapon, but it was stolen by the Mandalorians long ago, and over the span of many ages eventually ended in the hands of Darth Maul during the height of the Clone Wars.” Kylo ignited the saber and spun it in a smooth circle. “But this is not that weapon. This design is refined to more modern sensibilities, and that one was toned with the brutality of more archaic weapons.” He did not particularly prefer modern sensibilities when it came to saber aesthetics; his own choice of weapon was based on a very old design. But for one reason or another, the darksaber Maul had used had never captivated Kylo as much as the one in his hands did now.

“I sense that you have more to share with me,” Snoke eventually said, breaking Kylo out of his dazed fascination.

“Yes, that is correct, master, I…” Kylo placed both the saber and the mask on the floor and slipped the folded piece of parchment from where it nestled behind his belt. “These symbols. Found on a device the assassin used. Have they any meaning to you?”

As he unfolded the flimsi, he felt a slight tug upwards, as if a strong wind was pulling on the paper. He let go, and the parchement rose, following Snoke’s lazy gesture, until it was floating close to the eye level of the massive hologram. Kylo felt a shiver of admiration for his master’s ability to command the Force at such a distance. He clasped his hands together and waited, with shallow anticipatory breaths.

“Ah…” Snoke finally rumbled. “This confirms it.”

He was quiet then, for an uncomfortably long time, until Kylo was forced to ask, “Confirms what, master?”

The scrap of flimsi fell out of the air as if an invisible string holding it had been cut; it swooped and fluttered unpredictably until Kylo summoned it back to his hand with a thought. “The assassin you encountered was, based on this evidence, a Void Knight.”

Kylo had never heard the term before, but it sounded just right to describe the attacker. “A… Void Knight, Supreme Leader?”

“Indeed. They were a rather secretive group that resided exclusively in the Unknown Regions, never seeking to expand their power or influence and thus going unnoticed for a century by the easily distracted Jedi council.”

That could begin to explain why Hux had been the target of the attack. The First Order chiefly operated out of the Unknown Regions; it was where the resurgent seeds of the toppled Empire had been planted. “Do they expect to reclaim the territory from the Order? Was this an act of terrorism?”

“Possibly. But I imagine this assassin was acting alone, plotting the attack as one final act of vengeance.” Dismissively, Snoke settled back in his throne. “As an organization, the Void Knights were vanquished long ago.”

“Supreme Leader,” Kylo entreated, holding out his hands in supplication. “I hardly think we can dismiss this as an isolated incident.” It wasn’t uncommon for Snoke to withhold information from Kylo Ren. It was part of his mentorship; he gave Kylo just what he needed to act with impunity, and Kylo deferred to his wisdom. But perhaps it was the memory of the ghostly animal skull mask staring, as if at him. Perhaps, for once, he felt… threatened.

Snoke’s hand shifted to the arm of his throne; he was about to cut off the transmission. Kylo bristled with indignation, and then felt a deep shame slicing into him, that he would dare question the Supreme Leader.

“For now, focus on the General’s swift recovery,” Snoke commanded. “He is exceedingly valuable to us.” He bent forward, to emphasize his point. “I place him under your protection.”

Kylo held his scowl until the hologram had vanished.

 

The sprawling First Order base _Restitution_ hovered in geosynchronous orbit thousands of kilometers above the surface of Harlon III, perpetually casting a shadow over one of its densest main urban regions. The occupants of that city could only see the massive, dark underbelly – a ceiling, not a sky – which was peppered with pale lights from viewports; the lowest deck of the base had many sections where the hallways had floors of transparisteel. The officers took great pleasure in walking with the conquered city in sight beneath their boots.

When Kylo Ren’s shuttle took off at an angle, heading back to the Finalizer, he could see the umbra over the land. He could understand how, in a certain sense, the removal of the sun was equitable. After all, most able-bodied beings from Harlon III worked in the asteroid mines, and rarely saw daylight. It would be unfair if their families, who contributed far less, had the luxury of a blue sky.

But it was also a punishment for an attempted rebellion years ago, when Sonn-Blas was just beginning to take over the government. After the First Order secured the planet, they ordered construction of the base as a strategic counterpoint to their other planned strongholds, including Starkiller. It should have kept the technologically stunted Harl in line. Having never achieved control over hypermatter, they still were using fossil fuels for energy when Sonn-Blas arrived, and their computer systems were only as intelligent as their users. Not fully primitive, but isolated and far behind the rest of the galaxy.

Perhaps they would need a more vehement reminder of their inferiority.

 

As soon as Kylo was back aboard the _Finalizer_ , he headed for the medbay where Hux was being kept. It seemed natural to check in on the man he had been tasked to guard, but Kylo knew that, for all that he would obey the Supreme Leader unquestioningly, he resented this duty.

Because, he reminded himself, he had only taken care to protect Hux earlier out of penance for his mistakes.

The ward was mostly droids and techs, with many layers of security that Kylo easily pushed through. It wasn’t often that commanding officers were badly injured enough to require a bacta tank. Hux was the only patient being cared for in this section.

Kylo’s scars twinged, as if they remembered forming over the injuries he received on Starkiller. This was the same ward where he had been kept, though he’d only sensed it from within murky sleep.

Now Hux was enduring the same. The medtechs had chosen a horizontal tank, to best support his healing abdomen. The general looked nothing like himself, floating limply with most of his face obscured by the air mask, his orange hair fanning out in the liquid. The surgery scar was a pinkish pit in the middle of his chest; the raw flesh bared so it would reconstruct itself with the building blocks the bacta provided.

Bending over and placing his hand against the transparent casing, Kylo tried to attune himself to whatever turbulent wisps of thought were running through the general’s mind. Reason told him that this would not sate his need for answers; even if Hux knew why he had been targeted, it would be impossible to pull that information from him while he slept. But, just to himself, Kylo could secretly confess to a different curiosity. He had never probed the general’s mind, had never been able to slip in and eavesdrop. Some people wore the surface layer of their thoughts on their sleeves, where it was almost impossible to avoid sensing their emotions, but Hux was sealed tight. In fact, he seemed to be more perceptive to Kylo’s moods than Kylo was of his.

The temptation to get a taste of what the man kept so secret was strong. Stronger than Kylo’s dislike of Hux, and stronger than his self-restraint.

He hit a wall. Kylo flinched and then pushed harder, baffled. He wasn’t coming up against active resistance – Hux was in no state to put up mental blocks. And it wasn’t as if Kylo sensed nothing. The very edges of his perception were brushing up against something with definite texture and color. But it was as if Hux’s mind was surrounded by a metal cage, and Kylo could not quite fit his fingers through the tiny, unyielding holes, despite knowing there was something within.

He scrabbled at this bizarre barrier, more keenly interested in Hux’s mind than ever before. He had heard of Force-nulls who simply could not be read, but they didn’t tantalize like this. They didn’t feel like a hardened shell had grown around their consciousness.

Finally, he pulled back, frustrated. There was nothing he could do against this yet; it would require further study.

Had it always been there? Or had it formed after the attack, like a scar? Was it part of Hux, or was it separate from him?

Was it related to the reason why a member of a vanquished cult would come for Hux’s life?

Kylo’s palm caressed the rounded exterior of the tank. Snoke had charged him with protecting this man, but he intended to do far more. The mysteries of the Force… powers that no Jedi had ever imagined… he would take them all for himself. And if General Hux was involved in any way, then he, too, would belong to Kylo Ren.


End file.
